Hello, sorry for last weeks interruption, I didnāt have time to send my newsletter. I was really busy. Lotās of things going on in my life, have to make some decisions, difficult.
But this week, I thought itās important again to send out the newsletter again, as I really like create and send the newsletter. So I collected again news that I found interesting and thatās useful for others to read including some pictures from a small network event where I took part of.
So start reading. I am sure some of the news in this newsletter you can probably use in your daily job or at your agency serving customers.
š
Time for a laugh: No need to pay for a Claude subscribtion, McDonalds got you coveredš
šøšŖ Meanwhile in Sweden: an AI manager runs a coffeeshop
Interesting to see what goes wrong, what goes right. Would you like to have an AI boss?
šAnd now a SEO Breakā¬ļø
First of all the pictures that went viral among the SEO community from Google Search Central Lie in Toronto. I think the slides speak for themselves.
A few other notes on it:
Crawl vs. Index: āCrawled ā Currently not indexedā is rarely a technical rendering issue; itās usually a quality signal. Google may have tried the content and decided it āwasnāt good,ā or itās a canonical/duplicate issue.
Gemini in AIO / AI Mode vs. Gemini in App. They both use the same model, but Google Search āshapesā Gemini differently in search than the standalone app. Results from AIO and AI Mode are expected to be different *There is no benefit in converting your site to Markdown for LLM or SEO purposes. *There is no benefit to creating a llms.txt file for SEO.
Details and many more very nice slidesššš via:
https://www.jcchouinard.com/google-search-central-live-toronto-slides-april-2026/
And this is also one worth to share from Aleyda :
More and more evidence also comes out that AI generated scaled content goes up and then very fast down again, fully in line with the slides from Googleās Toronto event.
š„Mr Beast copy from the best
Learn from the best, copy from the best, and model just like Tony Robbins teaches. For YouTube, that person or model is MrBeast.
Checkout this motivational video. Most important takout: on the algorithm: it doesnāt exist. Replace āalgorithmā with āaudienceā every time. The algorithm didnāt like your video. No. The audience didnāt. YouTube is a mirror. If people click and watch, it gets promoted. The growth hack industry sells you a god that isnāt there.
Before you hit record, run a checklist:
Whatās the thumbnail?
Whatās the title?
Whatās the first 5 seconds?
Whatās the first 30 seconds?
If you canāt answer all four clearly, donāt film.
On thumbnails: make them simple enough that a scrolling viewer instantly understands and feels emotion. MrBeastās test: if you can still wonder about the story hours later, the thumbnail/title combo is strong.
On autoplay: many people never see the thumbnail; the video just starts. You must visually and emotionally grab them in the first 5 seconds.
On matching expectations: your title and thumbnail set the promise; the first 10 seconds must honor it. If the title says āTether is a scam,ā start with āTether is a scam and Iām going to show you why.ā Match, then exceed. The first 10 seconds are critically undervalued.
On retention: remove every dull moment. Show your video to 10 critical people and let them roast it. Even 10 seconds of talking head with no cut loses people; adding Bācam or a new angle at 3 seconds keeps it interesting.
On the real metric: the most important metric is the next video. You donāt want āthat was good, but enough for todayā; you want āholy crap, whatās next?ā so viewers binge 10 videos in a row.
Checkout an earlier post on Mr Beast, I wrote about Mr Beast in edition 18:
Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 18
š¦¾Clone your way to internationalization with Clonable
šGot a demo of Algoliaās agentic search & discovery layer
I recently joined a company tour through my network group, and Algolia gave a great demo of their B2B search and discovery engine. I recorded it during dinner (not the best angle from the back, but still very watchable).
What stood out: their Agent Studio powering AI agents that make on site search and discovery truly fun. These agents help users with complex queries by reasoning through intent, dynamically updating results in real-time, suggesting smart sidebar comparisons and filters, and even delivering expert-level insights directly on product detail pages (PDPs).
Itās a clear preview of where agentic on site search is heading. Sound on (English speaker).
If youāre working on digital product experiences, definitely worth a watch!
More on Algolia here: https://www.algolia.com
š©āš»Vercel introduction slides
Same event, different slides, this time on Vercel, the AI coding platform. I knew them already but for many attendants is was new. They gave an introductionary presentation. (Thanks Nicky!)
Next weeks in the follow up, we get an āagentic courseā from Vercel. Looking forward. I share the slides, might be useful for some.
My highlight the slides:
Where you see different use cases in busineses for -in this example- Black friday. You see the way we work now will be transformed, with tools like Vercel itās much easier for marketing teams to create pages for promotions.
For Sales to get tailored insights and actions
And for IT to pro-actively respond.Vercelās internal support system already succesfully resolves 87.6% of incoming requests. Now they didnāt dive into it but my guess is it works much much better then the -so far in many organisations still used- āticketā system.
Know user intent: Great AI agents donāt just answer questions they understand who the user is (name, preferences, loyalty, saved addresses), what page/context theyāre on, and their full history (abandoned carts, repeat visits, past purchases) to close the loop intelligently.
āAct on user intent: The best AI assistants donāt stop at understanding they do whatever the platform allows: search, recommend, add to cart, or complete checkout. They combine context awareness with real action capabilities.ā
š¦šŖ UAE governments go full AI
So whatās happening on the digital side in the UAE. Well something really interesting. UAE already a leader or close to a leader at many digital topics, now embraces AI at government level.
Announcing what he described as a new government system, Sheikh Mohammed said the plan aims to make the UAE the first country globally to adopt āagentic AIā models capable of independently executing tasks, managing processes and supporting decision-making.
Iām very curious how this will play out especially from my perspective here in the Netherlands. Many Dutch people (including me) complain that the āhuman touchā in government services is lost. Civil servants seem locked into rigid processes. (I can confirm that personally also for Netherlands).
UAE claims that AI might help to get or keep (I donāt know the situation in UAE), the personal touch so itās AI and humans.
Every federal employee will receive specialized AI training. The whole transformation is being overseen at the highest levels, with a clear message: AI isnāt replacing people itās amplifying them to create a faster, more responsive government. People still come first.
I think we can learn from this. Very interesting to follow.
Thanks for reading Crossborder Alex : Global Marketing & E-commerce! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Interested in more? Checkout my archive!
Or use my vibe coded search engine to find content tailored to you
Thanks for reading Crossborder Alex : Global Marketing & E-commerce! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.